Rooftop Solar Battle Pits Companies Against Utilities

By Andrew Herndon -
May 10, 2013

SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), Sungevity Inc.,
Sunrun Inc. and Verengo Inc., companies that financed the
majority of U.S. rooftop solar installations, formed a lobbying
group to counter efforts by “monopoly utilities” to quash
programs that support renewable energy in 43 states.

The Alliance for Solar Choice will focus initially on
preserving so-called net energy metering policies that require
utilities to purchase surplus electricity at retail rates from
customers with rooftop solar systems, the group said today in a
statement.

The solar companies are responding to “the coordinated
utility attack on net metering throughout the country,” Bryan
Miller, the group’s president and vice president of public
policy and power markets at San Francisco-based Sunrun, said
yesterday by telephone. Utility owners including PG&E Corp. (PCG),
Edison International and Sempra Energy (SRE) “have opposed net energy
metering since its inception.” The group plans to lobby
lawmakers and organize public campaigns.

The effort underscores the growing conflict between rooftop
solar providers and power companies that disagree about the
long-term sustainability of industry support mechanisms such as
net energy metering.

Utilities say that as more people install solar panels at
home and are compensated for the power they generate, it shifts
the costs of operating their grids to non-solar users.

‘Unfair Burden’

“We are concerned that there’s an unfair burden on our
customers who have not installed solar panels,” Vanessa
McGrady, a spokeswoman for Edison International’s Southern
California Edison, said today by e-mail. People with solar
systems “are still using the distribution grid and other
utility services, minus generation, but do not pay their
share.”

Edison Electric Institute, an association of investor-owned
power companies that serve about 70 percent of the U.S.
market, in January said “threats to the centralized utility
business model have accelerated” in part due to net energy
metering.

California utilities have estimated that net energy
metering may eventually shift as much as $1.3 billion a year in
costs to non-solar customers.

“It’s not a question of being threatened by this” but
rather “making sure it’s sustainable to everybody,” David
Rubin, PG&E’s director of service analysis, said yesterday by
phone. The utility’s primary concern is that net-metered solar
customers, which may zero out their annual bill in some cases,
aren’t paying to maintain grid infrastructure that’s necessary
for them to ship excess power or use electricity at night when
the sun doesn’t shine, he said.

Economic Benefits

The Vote Solar Initiative, a San Francisco-based advocacy
group, said in a January study that net energy metering will
provide economic, public health and environmental benefits
valued at more than $92 million a year to customers of
California’s three biggest utilities.

“Utilities almost never fret over rising costs to
ratepayers,” Will Craven, a SolarCity spokesman, said yesterday
by e-mail. “Yet rooftop solar, which is actually driven by
consumer demand and is putting more clean energy on the grid and
creating jobs, is the object of these utilities’ intense
concern.”